I laughed with glee, as if I were actually becoming a lady-in-waiting in the royal courts instead of just playing one. “Truly? And who is to play Hermione?”
The light in his eyes shuttered and he turned away, dance over, hand gripping the back of his neck.
I took a step toward him. “You didn’t see?”
“I did.”
“Well?”
“It’s Minna.”
I crossed my arms. “Indeed. Minna as queen, me as her underling.”
“Ah, but this queen also dies.” His eyebrows wiggled as he urged me out the alley door, draping my wrap around my shoulders.
“Does she, now?” I couldn’t help but grin as my voice echoedin the empty alley. How evil I was. I didn’t wish Minna dead, of course, but I didn’t mind that her character would be. “This queen isn’t the lead, then?”
“Princess Perdita carries most of the story for the female roles. Poor Queen Hermione has too many enemies to live through even the first act.”
“How sad for her.”
“Her name may be higher on the program, but this choreographer says she’ll have slightly less impressive sequences than her most lovely lady-in-waiting.”
“Also sad.” I giggled. “Where are we going?”
“You know better than to ask.” He slanted a daring look at me, offering his arm. “Will you come?”
“I will.” I didn’t even hesitate when we did not turn onto the Strand, but instead crossed it and continued north, a most unusual route that was nowhere near Mama Jo’s boardinghouse. I nodded at the greengrocer packing up for the night and the woman sweeping up feather remnants in her milliner’s shop. Then we left the market, and I ran my fingertips along the top of a black iron fence on a long street of homes, not once voicing the questions I had about our destination. Somewhere along the line, I’d come to take for granted that Jack Dorian ultimately wanted the best for me, that his purpose in this was to help me. I suppose that was the beginning of trust, whether or not it was deserved.
Well, he was about to prove one way or the other.
22
It was the smell that first caused me to hesitate—a foul mix of moist sewage and rodents. It hung in the air as we stepped into a large, open square with a pillar reaching to the sky, the odor swirling through my senses. I hardly noticed the chafing of the ill-fitting shoes against my feet.
“Where are we?”
Jack Dorian’s jovial tone dampened as we paused in the square. “As Keats so famously put it, ‘Where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side-by-side, and groan together.’”
I turned a full circle, taking in the seven roads spidering out from the square, disappearing into an oblivion of smog and debris. Squalid tenements were stacked one upon the other in dubiously balanced rows and spilling forth with laundry lines and crowds of people who, for lack of any other option, called this place home. At the center of it all stood that pillar, lifting the faces of seven different sundials toward the smoggy sky, and I knew.
How many years had passed since that wretched night? Sevenor eight at least. Maybe more. He couldn’t have known what this place was to me. I stepped over horse dung that clogged the overfull streets and peered at birds hanging by one foot from a long spit against a building where a boy stood, cap in hand, to sell his trappings. Across the square an ancient clock tower bonged out a wobbly announcement of the hour—five o’clock.
“Do you know the place?”
Even though I’d been in these streets only once, it was all too familiar. “Seven Dials.” I breathed out the words, hardly more than a whisper.
“Ah, you are familiar with it.” He stood, considering the buildings hemming us in.
“I’ve been before.”
“Despite your great moral character.”
I swallowed and held my ground, breathing only through my mouth. My stomach rolled over for so many reasons.
With a gentle tug, he led me through the square and down an eastern street bordered by noisy pubs and stores that sold items not quite secondhand—perhaps fourth or fifth. We turned where a street sign was embedded into the side of a nearly windowless pub and into an even narrower street, where the stench was mercifully halved by the tall buildings on either side, and he called a loudhalloointo the emptiness.
It was chaos as soon as his voice sounded. Women of all sizes and shapes, some as young as seven or eight years old, appeared from doors and around corners, gathering in the alley. Then he turned to me with a sly look. “My lady, I give you training part two—the training of others.”
